Archive December 2009

Top 10 Fantasy Athletes of the 2000s

Here's my completely subjective listing of the ten best fantasy players the past decade. This isn't based on where you'd get them in the draft, but what they produced on the field. Basically, who would you have drafted in 1999 in a keeper league with no cost to holding the player for 10 years?

Best Solo Missions of Decade: Kobe, Wade, TMac, KG

For the end of the "aughts" and the start of the "teens", everyone is doing their All-Decade teams. I may still do that, but it seems too obvious to me (there are four no-brainer choices: a C, 2 Fs, and a G and of the other two best players of the decade one could easily fit as a guard). So instead, I'm going to start by looking at the most impressive individual seasons of the last decade. Today I am going to talk about the most outstanding seasons turned in by individuals when surrounded by terrible supporting casts in the last decade. And by bad supporting cast I don't mean just non-All Stars but still talented teams (like the 01 Sixers, 03 Spurs or 06 Mavs), I mean casts where players are starting that might not even make some other teams in the NBA. I mean casts where after that season, some of those guys were never heard from again. The finalists for this category are McGrady in 03, Garnett in 03, Kobe in 06, and Wade in 09. Even though none of their teams won a title or even made it out of the first round of the playoffs that season, they were four of the most impressive single-season performances that I saw this decade.

How to go 14-1 and Anger Your Fan Base

It's hard to believe a team that's 14-1 has an angry fan base. But that's what has happened in Indianapolis after the Colts pulled their starters late in the third quarter of Sunday's loss to the Jets despite clinging to a 15-10 lead. Even if it was the correct football move, it's become a PR disaster.

Week 16 Observations

That the Giants could dominate Washington on the road so completely, and get annihilated so thoroughly at home six days later by the Panthers shows just how great the game-to-game variance is in the NFL. Granted, the Giants have been one of the most Jekyll and Hyde teams in recent memory, but I watched a 14-2 team become a 2-14 team with the exact same personnel. That's got to be a coaching issue, and while it's a done deal that Bill Sheridan gets fired, Tom Coughlin needs to reconnect with this group, too. The handling of Osi Umenyiora coming off ACL surgery this year was also poor. I'd hate to see him leave and play at a Pro Bowl level for another team.

Disappointments

After some closer-than-usual inspection of the bottom of the Eastern Conference last week, I had targeted the Wizards for a big week. Unfortunately, the Wizards put forth a lackluster effort in a 101-89 loss to Minnesota on Saturday, negating any momentum built in wins over the Sixers and Bucks earlier in the week. It was the third time this season the Wizards had won two straight, only to have lost the third game. As the rocker Meatloaf might sing "two out of three ain't bad" -- especially in the Eastern Conference -- but in this case, it is bad.

Chris Kaman vs Kendrick Perkins

I was on the Lakers Ground message board today, and someone asked who was the better player...Chris Kaman or Kendrick Perkins. Most fantasy owners would probably rate Kaman higher than Perkins based on their box score stats. When you look at the advanced stats, though, the case can be made that Perkins has more impact on the game in real life.

The Bowl Season of the Mountain West?

Bowl season has been, to this point, less than spectacular. However, one interesting thing has emerged. Three of the five games thus far have featured Mountain West teams, and all three of those teams have won. Wyoming kicked off bowl season with a win over Fresno State in double overtime in the only great game to date. BYU handled Oregon State with ease in the oddly windy Las Vegas Bowl. Then, Utah beat Cal pretty solid as well.

Week 15 Observations

The weather-delayed games made for a perfect balance of six games in the morning and six in the afternoon. I can watch 5-6 games simultaneously by avoiding commercials (If I hear "Do you ever have trouble putting on a condiment?" one more time, I'm going to take a baseball bat to my flat screen - it wasn't funny the first time), and flipping during huddles. (Actually, the one weakness is that DirecTV moronically has one game blacked out on the Sunday Ticket channels and makes you flip to CBS or FOX, which disrupts my seamless rhythm). But more or less, six games is doable, nine is too many and three is too few - sometimes you actually get stuck watching a commercial or a instant replay review. I do admit it was tough during the late games to choose between CIN-SD, PIT-GB and OAK-DEN. I was partial to the latter because my survivor pool was on the line. (I won thanks to JaMarcus Russell doing the unthinkable). But the NFL should go 6 and 6 more often rather than the usual 9/3 or 9/4.

The Eastern Conference -- Where Every Game is a Big Game

It's a crazy world in the Eastern Conference, where two games separate sixth place Milwaukee and 12th place Indiana. And those two teams tip off in a HUGE Central Division showdown that will go a long way in determining who will be in the playoffs if swine flu wiped out the rest of the season. I've stopped caring about the top spots: Boston/Orlando, Cleveland/Boston, Orlando/Cleveland, meh... The drama is going down here in the cellar -- where "mediocrity" happens.

How Much Does Media Coverage Influence What We "Know" About Basketball?

We all have opinions about basketball, things that we "know" to be true. But how much of what we "know" is actually influenced by how the media chooses to disseminate information? Today I read about the "Player of the Decade" and participated in a blog conversation about "clutch scoring" that re-emphasized to me just how large of a part the media has in telling us what to "know"...whether it is actually true or not.

Billy Hamilton went for $28 in the NL LABR auction this past weekend. I discussed this with a fellow writer who participates in Tout Wars with me later this month and we discussed the problem with investing heavily into Hamilton.